Phantom: Chainfire Trilogy Part 2

Chapter 52

With Cara right on her heels, Nicci strode through the immense brass-clad doors covered in elaborate, engraved symbols. A flickering flash of lightning came in through the dozen round-topped windows between the towering mahogany columns to illuminate row upon row of shelves all around the cavernous room. They had managed to patch only the worst of the damage to the two-story-tall windows—enough, they hoped, that the room could be used for its intended purpose as a containment field. Some of the heavy dark green velvet draperies with gold fringe were getting wet as rain blew in the remaining holes on some of the stronger gusts.

Seeing what was in the center of the room, floating above the large table Nicci had once floated above herself, she hoped that a bit of errant rain would be all that came in through those missing parts of the windows.

Rushing to meet her, Zedd gripped her shoulders. Desperation was clearly evident in his eyes.

“Did you find him? He’s alive, isn’t he? Is he all right?”

Nicci took a breath. “Zedd, he survived the events in the sliph—I at least found out that much.”

The sliph had also already told them that much. Rikka had been there, guarding the well, when the sliph had unexpectedly returned. They were all surprised that the sliph had returned at all, much less returned to tell them what had happened.

The silver creature had abruptly been eager to talk—up to a point—to tell them what had happened to Richard. It wasn’t because the sliph wanted to tell where she had been with one of her travelers, but rather that Richard, her master, had told the sliph to tell them that he was safe and where he had gone. She was eager to do his bidding.

Unfortunately, the sliph’s nature was to be secretive, and they weren’t able to get straight answers from her on much more of it. Zedd had said that the sliph wasn’t being perverse; she simply couldn’t help the way others had created her. She was being true to her nature. He said that they would just have to go along with the sliph’s way of revealing information and do their best to learn what they could from her.

Zedd had also detected on the sliph the trace residue power left by a witch woman. They were pretty sure that it had to be Six. They weren’t sure what Six was up to, but at least they knew from the sliph that Richard had somehow escaped her clutches.

“But where is he? Did the sliph take you there? Take you where she said she left him?”

“She did.” Nicci glanced at the Mord-Sith and then laid a hand on Zedd’s shoulder. “After we got to the place where the sliph had taken him, she then told us where he had gone: to the land of the night wisps. We still had to travel some distance to get there.”

Zedd stared in astonishment. “The night wisps?”

“Yes. But Richard wasn’t there.”

“At least he’s alive. It sounds like he was acting on his own volition, and not that of a witch woman,” Zedd said, sounding a little relieved. “What did they say? What were the wisps able to tell you?”

Nicci heaved a sigh. “I wish you could travel so that you could have gone there, Zedd. Maybe they would have told you more than they would tell us. They wouldn’t even allow us to enter beyond this strange, dead forest.”

“Dead forest? What dead forest?”

Nicci lifted her hands. “I don’t know, Zedd. I’m no expert in the outdoors. There was this vast area of oaks but they were all dead—”

“The oak wood is dead?” Zedd leaned closer to her. “Are you serious? The oaks are dead?”

Nicci shrugged. “I guess. They were oak trees. Richard taught me what an oak was. These were all dead, though.”

Zedd glanced away as he scratched an eyebrow. “Were there bones among these oaks?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Cara said, nodding. “There were bones scattered everywhere among those dead trees.”

“Bags,” Zedd cursed under his breath.

“Why?” Nicci asked. “What is it?”

Zedd looked up. “Bui you talked to the wisps?”

Nicci nodded. “Tam, he said his name was.”

Zedd rubbed his chin as he stared off in thought. “Tam . . . don’t know him.”

“There was another, named Jass,” Nicci added.

Zedd’s mouth twisted as he considered the name. “I’m afraid I don’t know that one, either.”

“Jass said that Richard was looking for a woman that the wisps should know.”

“That would have to be Kahlan,” Zedd said with a knowing nod.

“That’s what we figured, too,” Cara said.

“But why would he go to the wisps to look for her?” His question sounded more for himself than for Nicci, but she answered it anyway.

“The sliph wouldn’t tell us about any of that part, only where she took him. Apparently, Richard wasn’t specific enough about what he instructed the sliph to tell us. She won’t go beyond her explicit instructions. Like you said, it’s her nature.

“The wisps wouldn’t tell us why he had been there, either. They said that his reasons for being there were his own and were not necessarily for others to know. They said that they couldn’t reveal such things on his behalf.”

“Not for others—but, but . . .” His voice ended in sputtering agitation. Zedd looked back at both of them. “But didn’t they tell you anything about what Richard was doing there? Anything at all? We have to know why he would go to the wisps. He was on his way here, and then something happened to cost him his gift while traveling—probably something involving Six—so he went to the wisps? Why? What did they tell him? What happened when he was there?”

“I’m sorry, Zedd,” Nicci said. “We really weren’t able to find out much. The sliph did tell us some of it—what happened to Richard, where she took him, and that he went to the wisps—but she either doesn’t know anything more, or she simply doesn’t want to tell us the rest of it for some reason. Richard never returned to the sliph, but because he can no longer travel that only makes sense. It could be that the sliph really doesn’t know any more.

“Richard would probably have started out on foot. I imagine he would head back here, to the Keep. After all, that’s where he was going when something went wrong in the sliph. For some reason he went to the wisps, but that may have had more to do with geography than anything else—he was much closer to them than coming all the way back here, so he may have decided to make a quick stop there before heading back to us. It may be nothing more than that.

“As far as the wisps, they wouldn’t tell us much either. They wouldn’t let us go beyond the dead trees, into those huge, ancient trees beyond. But there is some good news in it. We at least know for sure that Richard is alive, and that he went to the land of the wisps. That’s what matters—Richard is alive. Knowing Richard, he will try to find a horse as soon as possible and will probably show up here before we know it.”

Zedd squeezed her arm. “You’re right, my dear.” It was a gesture that Nicci found comforting, almost as if it were a connection to Richard himself. It was the kind of reassurance Richard himself would have offered at such a troubling moment.

Zedd suddenly frowned. “You said the wisps wouldn’t let you into the big pines?”

Nicci nodded. “That’s right. They wouldn’t let us proceed any farther than the dead oak woods, or allow us to see the other wisps.”

“In a way it makes sense.” Zedd ran a finger up along his temple as he considered. “The wisps are secretive creatures, and don’t generally allow anyone into their land, but it seems odd under the circumstances—and with word from me—that they wouldn’t welcome you in.”

“They’re dying.”

Zedd’s eyes turned up at her. “What?”

“Tam said that the wisps were dying out and that was why they didn’t want us to enter. He said that it’s a time of great strife among the wisps, great sadness and worry. They didn’t want strangers among them right now.”

“Dear spirits,” Zedd whispered. “Richard was right.”

Nicci’s insides tightened with anxiety. “What are you talking about? Richard is right about what?”

“The oaks dying. They protect the land of the wisps. The wisps are dying, too. It’s part of a cascade of events. Richard already told us why, in this very room. As if I needed yet more reason to believe him.”

“Yet more reason? What do you mean by that?”

He took Nicci’s elbow and turned her toward the spell-forms floating above the table. “Look here.”

“Zedd,” Nicci said in admonition, “that’s the Chainfire verification web—and it looks suspiciously like an interior perspective.”

“That’s right.”

“I know I’m right. The question is, what’s going on? What are you up to?”

“I found a way to ignite a kind of simulation of an interior perspective—one without you needing to be in it. It isn’t the same in every respect,” he said with a dismissive gesture, “but for the purpose I had in mind it was good enough.”

Nicci was astonished that he had been able to do such a thing. It was also somewhat disquieting to again see the very thing that had almost taken her life. But that wasn’t at all what she found most disturbing.

“Why are there two of them?” she asked. “There is only one Chainfire spell. Why are there two spell-forms here?”

Zedd flashed her a wry smile. “Ah, there is the trick of it. You see, Richard claimed that the chimes had been present in the world of life. If that were true, their presence would have contaminated the world of life, would have contaminated magic. And yet none of us has seen any evidence of it. That is the paradox of such contamination; it erodes your ability to detect its presence. I wanted to find a way to see if Richard was right—”

“Richard Rahl is right.”

Zedd shrugged one bony shoulder at her emphatic declaration. “But I needed to see if I could actually find any evidence. I didn’t understand all that emblem business Richard was going on about. I believe in him too, Nicci, but I don’t understand how he can see language in symbols the way he does, how he was able to come to the conclusions that he does. I need to see proof I understand.”

Nicci folded her arms as she stared at the twin spell-forms. “I guess I know how you feel. I believe in him, and he makes sense, but I sometimes feel lost, like I used to as a novice when there would be a test on things that were taught when I hadn’t been in class. When Richard . . .”

Nicci fell silent. Her arms came unfolded.

“Zedd, those two spell-forms aren’t the same.”

His smile grew sly. “I know that.”

Nicci stepped closer to the table, closer to the two forms made of glowing lines. She inspected them more carefully. She pointed at one.

“That one is the Chainfire spell. I recognize it. This other is identical, but it’s not the same. It’s a mirror image of the real spell.”

“I know.” He looked rather proud of himself.

“That’s impossible.”

“I thought so too, but then I remembered a book named The Book of Inversion and Duplex—”

Nicci rounded on the old wizard. “You know where The Book of Inversion and Duplex is?”

Zedd gestured vaguely. “Well, yes, I managed to lay my hands on a copy.”

Nicci eyed him suspiciously. “Lay your hands on a copy?”

Zedd cleared his throat. “The point is,” he said, taking her arm and turning her back to the glowing lines and the subject at hand, “I remembered from reading that book many, many years ago that it talked about techniques to duplex spell-forms. It never made any sense to me at the time. Why would anyone want to duplex a spell-form?

“But there was more. The book went on to give instructions on how to invert the spell-form that had first been duplexed. Craziest thing I’d ever heard of. At the time I dismissed the book and its obscure procedures. What could be the purpose of such a thing? Who would ever need to do such a thing? No one, I thought.”

He held up a finger. “And then, when thinking about the possibility of contamination left by the chimes, and trying to think of a way to prove Richard’s theory, I suddenly remembered reading that book once, and it hit me. I knew why someone would want to duplicate and invert a spell-form.”

Nicci was getting lost. “All right, I give up. Why?”

Zedd gestured excitedly to the two spell-forms. “This is why. Look. This one is the original, much like the one you were in, but without some of the more complex and unstable elements.” Zedd waved a hand, stressing that it was beside the point. “We don’t need them for this purpose. This one, here, is the exact same spell, duplicated, and then inverted. It’s a copy.”

“I understand that much of it,” Nicci said, “but I still don’t see what purpose it could serve to perform such a strange analysis.”

Smiling knowingly, Zedd touched his fingers to the side of her shoulder. “Flaws.”

“Flaws? What about—” Nicci gasped with comprehension. “When you turn a spell inside out and backward, the flaw won’t invert!”

“That’s right,” Zedd said with an impish twinkle and an instructive shake of his first linger. “The flaw won’t invert. It can’t. The spell-form is just a demonstration of the spell, a surrogate for something real. Therefore it can be manipulated—inverted. It’s not the real spell; you couldn’t invert a real spell. But flaws are not subject to the influence of the magic in books of instruction—only the specific, target magic is. The flaw is real. The flaw resides whole.”

Zedd turned solemn with the deadly serious nature of the material issue. “When the spell-form is activated, it carries with it the flaw, which is already embedded. When you duplicate the spell-form it carries the same flaw, but then when you invert it, the flaw can’t invert because it’s real, not a stand-in for something real like spell-forms are. Don’t forget, that contamination was what nearly killed you.”

Nicci looked from Zedd’s intense hazel eyes to the two glowing spell-forms. They were mirrored. She started searching the structure, seeing each line, each element, looking to the other spell-form that was the same, but flipped.

And then she saw it.

“There,” She breathed, pointing. “That part there is identical in both. It’s not flipped. It’s not a mirror image like everything else. It’s the same in both of these while everything else is inverted.”

“Exactly,” Zedd said in triumph. “Hence, the purpose of The Book of Inversion and Duplex—to discover flaws that can’t otherwise be seen or detected.”

Nicci stared at the old man, seeing him in a new light. She had known of The Book of Inversion and Duplex, but, like everyone else who had studied it, she had never understood its purpose. There had been debate about it, of course, but no one could ever offer a purpose for such an esoteric book of magic. It defied the conventional wisdom on the functioning and purpose of magic. In the end it had been dismissed as a mere curiosity from a time past. In fact, it had been presented in lectures as just that, an oddity, a relic of ancient times, useless, but nonetheless an object of note simply because it had survived.

Zedd, like Richard, never dismissed any bit of knowledge. Like all knowledge collected, he kept it cataloged somewhere in the back of his mind in case it ever came up again. When he had trouble finding an answer he would check his memory of forgotten things residing in an index in some dusty corner of his mind.

Richard did the same thing. Knowledge, once acquired, remained in his arsenal. It enabled him to put things together in new ways, to come up with surprising solutions that often challenged old, established ways of doing things. Many people found such a way of thinking, especially when it had to do with magic, treading dangerously close to heresy.

Nicci saw its true value. Real answers to problems came from just such a process of thought, logic, and reason—all based on what was known. It was the essence of a Seeker, the foundation of what he did in his search for truth. It was also one of the central qualities about Richard that so captivated Nicci. He was a student without formal training who was able to intuitively grasp the most complex issues in a way no one else could.

Zedd leaned in, pulling Nicci with him. “Look here. See this? Do you recognize it?”

“The part that didn’t invert?” Nicci shook her head. “No. What is it?”

“It’s the contamination left by the chimes. This, I recognize. This is the spider in the web of magic.”

Nicci straightened. “This proves that Richard was right, then.”

“The boy got it right,” Zedd agreed. “I don’t really understand how, but he had it exactly right. Once it’s isolated like this, I recognize the corrosion left by the chimes, the same as I recognize the reddish brown scale of rust. He was able to see it in the language of the lines, and he was right. The spell is contaminated; the source of that contamination was the chimes. This is the mechanism by which the chimes erode and destroy magic. If it has infected this spell, it has to have infected other things of magic as well.”

“Is that what’s killing the night wisps?” Cara asked.

“I’m afraid it would seem that way,” Zedd told her. “The oaks around their home place are also invested with protective magic. That both the oaks and the wisps are dying out together is suspicious in the extreme.”

Nicci walked to the windows, watching the indistinct fits of lightning through the opaque glass. “Creatures of magic are dying out. Just as Richard told us.”

She missed him so much that mournful anguish passed through her like the shadow of death itself darkening her soul. She felt like she would shrivel and die if they didn’t find him soon. She felt like she could not survive if she never got the chance to see him again, see the life in his gray eyes.

“Zedd, do you think he was right about the rest of it? Do you think that there really war dragons, and we’ve all forgotten that there were such things in the world? Do you think Richard was right that the world we knew is passing out of existence, vanishing into the realm of legend?”

Zedd sighed. “I don’t know, my dear, I really don’t. I’d like to think the boy is wrong in that much of it, but I learned a long time ago not to bet against Richard.”

Nicci smiled to herself. She had learned the same thing.